I've been playing this a bit and so far it's actually not too bad. It's kind of a mix between Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare, Borderlands and 7 Days 2 die. You gather resources during your missions to build your base and craft weapons (guns and melee weapons) and ammo. Once you're ready, waves of zombies come and you try and stop them, either through direct combat or with traps you place around your base. So far it seems to be all pve and I don't know if there is any pvp. You can play co-op and single player. If your looking for a hard core survival game, this isn't it. It seems like a much more casual survival light type of game that you could safely play with your kids. The zombies aren't very scary and the building and combat are pretty simple. Not sure if there is an "end game" or how much longevity it will have but it's fun to just play for a while then go and do something else.

Searching on Steam gives me nothing. Is this an EA or Ubisoft exclusive?

It's an Epic Games "exclusive" on the PC. As in you need an Epic Games account and use their launcher. There are PS4 and Xbox One versions as well. It's also currently in paid Beta (aka Early Access) right now.

Searching on Steam gives me nothing. Is this an EA or Ubisoft exclusive?

It's an Epic Games "exclusive" on the PC. As in you need an Epic Games account and use their launcher. There are PS4 and Xbox One versions as well. It's also currently in paid Beta (aka Early Access) right now.

Yes but given the current setup it's going to be a very painful experience for people not willing to cough up cash. Things can obviously still change to make things nicer for those types of players but given what some alpha players have been posting it seems like big changes in that area are unlikely.

In a moment of something, I put $60 on this and then many hours of time attempting to understand just what the holy shitfuck is going on. There is a lot going on.

Doesn't help that the UI is an unholy clusterfuck of shit shifting around, incomplete information, and words that're interactive but look noninteractive. It's like someone glanced at hellish game city-sim/god-game UIs from 1992 and said "hey that looks like a fucking rad idea" and inked the final design on a wet bar napkin so they could go back to doing backflips on their BMX on the way home to play shareware Doom.

I think that is pretty annoying. I haven't determined the gameplay reason for it, not 100%. I suspect it might be for design reasons, like you're supposed to do your gathering and crafting in the field like a real Rick Grimes or something.

What it really does is confuse the fuck out of some of us. I swear to God that we had been playing for NINE HOURS and my friend says "So, I upgrade the schematics and then I have to make the weapon from that?". Good for him that he was on the headset. He had just been using traps that he scavenged during the mission, but I don't blame him.

I started out pretending that I was playing a CCG and that mindset works pretty well. Even with the collection book, research points, skill points, separate XPs for everybody. See, I upgrade cards at home and then while I'm really playing the game, I can tap houses for mana to cast weapons and traps using my upgraded cards. But I'm also playing a shooter.

For a while, we were not sure if we were going to be able to replay missions. Then we were able to. We also were not getting mission credit while playing in the other guy's world, but later we were.

I had a good time but I wasn't sure I wanted to admit it. This is the sort of game that F13 lives to rip apart.

It does, however, look pretty good and doesn't crash much. So, there's that. Also llamas. The fuck?

Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.They called it The Prayer, its answer was lawMommy come back 'cause the water's all gone

The game and missions are decent. The loot card piņata fuckery are plain stupid. It's all the bullshit of every shitty mobile game tacked on to a fun co-op game. There's a bit of Hellgate going on here, but mostly the bad parts.

I am not sure what the core gameplay is. Unfortunately, Mordheim has already claimed the title "Menu: The Game", while TESO has taken "Inventory: The Game" and so I'm not sure what to award Fortnite. If the core is running around stylized maps, looting houses, shooting monsters, and wondering where the fucking firetrucks are, then sure. That's fun.

I'll say that after enough time, it starts to come together. I still haven't unlocked everything to do. Of the things I have unlocked, I'm not sure what some of them do. I have three squads unlocked but I'm left to assume they apply some passive bonus to my crew in the field.

I sent someone off to collect firewood on a dirtbike, which kinda made me feel like a dick. I didn't imprison her in the Collection Book, which I feel is much like the Phantom Zone, so really she should be grateful.

I FEEL like I have been able to fiddle with the controller and cause some of the llamas to turn silver & gold, but it doesn't work all the time.

Just before I shut it down last night, we found daily quests.

Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.They called it The Prayer, its answer was lawMommy come back 'cause the water's all gone

I am not sure what the core gameplay is. Unfortunately, Mordheim has already claimed the title "Menu: The Game", while TESO has taken "Inventory: The Game" and so I'm not sure what to award Fortnite. If the core is running around stylized maps, looting houses, shooting monsters, and wondering where the fucking firetrucks are, then sure. That's fun.

Yes by core gameplay I mean the in-mission stuff of gathering resources, looting containers, building your fort and killing zombies.

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I'll say that after enough time, it starts to come together. I still haven't unlocked everything to do. Of the things I have unlocked, I'm not sure what some of them do. I have three squads unlocked but I'm left to assume they apply some passive bonus to my crew in the field.

The squads will increase your FORT stats and possibly give you bonuses in-mission *if* you slot them with survivors.

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I FEEL like I have been able to fiddle with the controller and cause some of the llamas to turn silver & gold, but it doesn't work all the time.

I don't like how I got stuck in a menu opening ~17 loot lamas without any way to get out of that menu. I sat there for ten minutes opening them and received loot for things I hadn't unlocked yet. There's lots of stats that aren't explained, what appears to be classes and types/styles of those classes for heroes. Ultimately I now have ~80 cards in my inventory, anything from grey to blue and I don't really know what any of it does. Not only do I have to learn how to actually play the game, but I also have to learn what all this stuff does.

I just wanted to loot things and build things; didn't realize I would have to play the meta game.

I hope it grows and I hope this cash infusion gives them some devs to clean this up a bit. There's some great ideas under the hood.

Err'y day. Sometimes I feel like my car is faster after I wash it. It's a known issue.

About the classes. Obviously Heroes are the ones you can control during the fun part. Survivors are to be slotted into squads, which apply bonuses to your hero stats, but I'm not 100% on exactly when; research needed. Defenders are to be slotted into your ... Defender slots? I don't have the game in front of me, but basically you will eventually be able to summon them to defend your stormshield base. This is different from home base: home base is where you open card packs and tickle llamas.

Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.They called it The Prayer, its answer was lawMommy come back 'cause the water's all gone

About the classes. Obviously Heroes are the ones you can control during the fun part.

You can also slot them as squad bonuses in your Hero boxy thingy if you have those slots unlocked.

They also can be sent on expeditions. Note that most expeditions use up your "Survivors" resource, which is different than your actual individual Survivor cards, and you don't see the cost when you browse through the list of expeditions. So be careful about that.

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Defenders are to be slotted into your ... Defender slots? I don't have the game in front of me, but basically you will eventually be able to summon them to defend your stormshield base. This is different from home base: home base is where you open card packs and tickle llamas.

Defenders are also slotted in your Hero boxy thingy, if you have those slots unlocked. They can be used in any mission with less than 4 people* if you place down one or more Defender pad and place them on the pads. Note that you need to give them weapons and ammo and they eat ammo like crazy (you get the weapons back).

* Players + Defenders <= 4. I.e. solo you can have up to 3 Defenders with you, with 4 players you can't have any Defenders.

Defenders are also slotted in your Hero boxy thingy, if you have those slots unlocked. They can be used in any mission with less than 4 people* if you place down one or more Defender pad and place them on the pads. Note that you need to give them weapons and ammo and they eat ammo like crazy (you get the weapons back).

He's not lying. They chew through ammo at a rate that makes them next to useless, especially for assault rifles or the like. I've seen some people argue that melee defenders are somewhat worthwhile, but the whole system is so clunky, I just never bother with them at all and regret nothing. I just recycle them now.

I think they go in another slot as well, but agree on the ammo thing. Tried one last night, but a huge part of base building is knowing where the husks are going to come from and poor placement meant that I don't know how he did. Not hard to do a field run just to gather ammo, though... I assume that I get to keep all my shit even if I fail. Haven't failed yet.

Why am I homeless? Why do all you motherfuckers need homes is the real question.They called it The Prayer, its answer was lawMommy come back 'cause the water's all gone

I haven't actually failed a protect the storm shield mission yet, but I'm almost absolutely sure there's no further penalties beyond whatever damage they happened to do to your defenses on the way to destroying your shield/amplifier. Mind you, in the later storm shield missions that could theoretically be a *ton* of damage. I'm at around Plankerton 4 or 5, and the waves are getting pretty terrifying. Thus far I've been lucky with having people join me, but it seems that later waves are probably going to require pre-forming a party. This is probably at least partially because I'm falling further and further behind the recommended level for the storyline missions, but there's also just a metric buttload of husks, and more and more mist monsters included. Smashers can make pretty quick work of most defenses.

I haven't seen any places that can accept defenders other than the hero pane to be summoned during missions or in the storm shield pane to be used on defend missions, and neither modifies your stats, so I'm sticking to my "Dump one in the collection book and recycle all of the extras" plan for delicious, delicious training manuals and hero xp.

I think they go in another slot as well, but agree on the ammo thing. Tried one last night, but a huge part of base building is knowing where the husks are going to come from and poor placement meant that I don't know how he did. Not hard to do a field run just to gather ammo, though... I assume that I get to keep all my shit even if I fail. Haven't failed yet.

yes all loot and crafting stuff is kept if you fail a mission. I've failed a few now just doing crafting runs too stock up on ammo mats.

Any defenders that use ammo currently is a waste of time they burn through their ammo so fast it has to be a bug. Melee defenders seem to work decent enough to distract and slow down husk rushes giving you time to blast through them yourself.

I don't like how I got stuck in a menu opening ~17 loot lamas without any way to get out of that menu. I sat there for ten minutes opening them and received loot for things I hadn't unlocked yet. There's lots of stats that aren't explained, what appears to be classes and types/styles of those classes for heroes. Ultimately I now have ~80 cards in my inventory, anything from grey to blue and I don't really know what any of it does. Not only do I have to learn how to actually play the game, but I also have to learn what all this stuff does.

Yes having certain types of loot auto-open when visit the Loot screen and having no way of canceling out is annoying. Even more annoying is getting one of those "choose one of two" selections and you have no idea which one you might have more of cause you can't view your inventory from the Loot UI.

Finally if you buy the Founders pack with the pair of Legendary heroes be warned that you will be forced to pick which pair of Legendary class heroes you want after doing the beginning tutorial missions. I.e. the game forces you to pick among classes you probably have no experience with other than Solider. Also the Founder pack Legendary hero male and female are identical which is different than the normal Hero cards where the male and female heroes of the same class and sub-class are usually different so you are really only getting one Legendary hero plus one "skin".